1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a two-way broadcasting system allowing a viewer to produce and send a program and a program broadcasting system, and more particularly to a two-way broadcasting system allowing a program sender to easily change the composition of a program and enabling a viewer to easily participate in a program while receiving the program.
2. Related Art
As a TV program, audience participation programs such as a quiz show or a karaoke contest show are known. Apart from viewing a program, a viewer of such programs has a desire to appear on the programs as a participant; these programs stand on satisfaction of the desire. In addition, among viewers having the same taste and interest, there are many requests to produce and broadcast original programs and to participate in them.
To participate in these programs, however, a viewer must go to a broadcasting station or a program broadcast relay site. Therefore, a viewer cannot easily participate while viewing the program. Moreover, regarding program production, a large sum of expenses is required for preparations, etc. of a broadcasting station or program broadcast relay site, thus making it difficult for a viewer to easily produce audience participation programs.
As means for solving these problems, there may be listed Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No. 2002-369175 and Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No. Hei-11-27649, for example.
The invention disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No. 2002-369175 is a viewer participation program production system in which a receiver set includes a video/audio encoder unit which encodes video and audio signals of a viewer picked up by a connected camera/microphone 7 and the encoded signals are sent to a broadcasting station via a two-way communication controller 6 while the broadcasting station side decodes the encoded video/audio data transmitted from the viewer by use of a viewer video receiving unit 10 to send the resulting signals to a control room 12 which controls transmission of broadcast video/audio programs, so that video/audio signals from the viewer are synthesized with studio video/audio signals, etc.
The invention disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No. Hei-11-27649 is a TV broadcasting system and a program production method used therein. In this method, a broadcasting station is provided with a program production unit for storing program contents producing materials and program contents and distributes the program contents producing materials to viewers via at least one of a TV channel and a communication channel, so that viewers can produce program contents using the program contents producing materials distributed from the broadcasting station and send the resulting program contents to the broadcasting station via the communication channel.
According to these conventional techniques, however, a dedicated apparatus such as a broadcasting station is required for producing a program. Furthermore, in the program production method used by a viewer, which is disclosed in Patent Document 2, while a program can be produced by a viewer, program contents distributed from a broadcasting station are needed and broadcasting facilities are further required for sending a produced program. Consequently, it is difficult for a viewer to produce and send an original viewer participation program.
In other words, there has not been realized a two-way broadcasting system allowing a viewer to originally produce and send a viewer participation interactive program and to easily participate in the program.